I have the LPA-1 and and love it... With the new canuk buck it's a great buy.. Have it shipped to the border and go pick it up on the US side.. UPS fee's are a killer other than that it's a great buy..

SG, you haven't mentioned a specific receiver for comparison, but in general if the respective units have similar maximum power capacities there's no good reason to expect that the separate units will somehow result in better sound. If the receiver amplifies transparently with flat frequency response and inaudibly low noise and distortion within the designed limits(typical these days), there's no magic that occurs when using two or three boxes instead of one. Slightly better measurable numbers(which may or may not be the case)don't result in an actual audible advantage in such a case.

I just purchased the MMC-1 processor. It is on sale for 899 and worth 3 times the price. I just love it. It replaced my lexicon DC-2 and everything about it is better. The build quality, ease of use, and of course sound are fantastic. The fact it comes with a 5 year warranty and 40% off upgrade doesn't hurt either. If you decide to go with a receiver I believe emotiva has one on sale that is every bit as good as seperates. Remember there products are based upon th3e sunfire platform.

I have had an LPA-1 powering my system for about 9 months now. I am still as happy with the purchase as ever. It does a fantastic job at powering my system. There are few things that 'stir-the-pot' more than an amp debate, but I'm a believer that it does matter in certain cases. My receiver (Pioneer Elite VSX-43TX) was not rated to power 4-ohm speakers, and really couldn't do it. It would clip & strain at even moderately high volume when powering my M80's. The LPA-1 doesn't break a sweat.

I did have one minor problem with mine. A couple of months ago, when firing up my system, one of the blue LED channel lights didn't come on all the way. It stayed dim and sort of pulsed a bit. The channel was on and playing just fine. I tapped the front of the LPA with my knuckle and it came back on as normal. Hasn't done it again. I'm sure it was just a loose wire. If it does it again I'll call Emotiva. 5 year warranty, ya know. Other than that, it's been perfect.

I owned the LMC-1 for about 2 weeks and ended up returning it because it was just too buggy. This was way before the firmware upgrade, so it may be much better now. YMMV. That MMC-1 at $899 is a great price. Although the nearly legendary Outlaw 990 is also now $899. While I have heard neither, they are both supposedly excellent pre-processors for the price. Although both a little long-in-the-tooth and probably on sale for a reason. I expect we'll see some new models from both companies in 2008.

If I hadn't just bought myself a new laptop, I'd probably be buying either the MMC or 990 for myself this holiday season with these prices. If/when my Pioneer dies, it will be replaced by a prepro from either Emotiva or Outlaw.

Boy, are you on a roll today. You got me on the floor again with that one.

Robb, assuming you're serious, "pre/pro" stands for pre-amplifier/processor. It's called that because it "processes" the incoming signal from a source (cable box, DVD player, etc.) previous to the signal being sent to the amplifier (pre-amplifier). A separate pre/pro has no amplifier. It must be used with a separate amplifier. A receiver is both a pre/pro and an amplifier in one box. A receiver with pre-outs can bypass it's built in amplifier section and, after processing the signal, send that signal to a separate amplifier, thus acting just like a separate pre/pro.

That huge power supply is still there in the AVR with preouts and could theoretically cause issue in the lower voltage signals associated with the video/audio signals before amplification. The stand alone pre/pro does not have this so they get to charge you more for less parts

The price may have something to do with lower manufacturing volumes. But I think it has more to do with what people are willing to pay. Companies differentiate products by price all the time even though the value may be similar to a lower priced product.

Sure, Robb, there're "schools of thought" that encourage the vain hope that spending more money on almost anything involved in audio would result in better sound. Of course there's no factual basis for this and the hopes are shown to be false when put to the(blind listening)test.

I did the Integra DTC-9.8 pre/pro because it had most of the features I wanted along with balanced XLR connections. No, I don't think this affected the sound quality with such short runs, but I do like that they click in and pull out nice and easy, as opposed to so many RCA connections which can take a worrying amount of exertion to separate. It really would have been a lot more cost-effective to buy a receiver, but I don't mind paying for the coolness factor now and again. I'm still very interested in seeing what Axiom comes out with.

Hutz. If you want the latest codecs and feature set receivers are the way to go. I'm actually considering a receiver as a HT pre-pro to an amp for that reason. But make no mistake about it... fidelity is compromised more or less by inserting a large transformer that gives off large amounts of heat, a magnetic field and RF interference in the same box that processes low voltage, easily corrupted signals using adjacent dedicated boards, transistors and circuits.

The best receivers dedicate alot of design features to minimizing and insulating the electro-magnetic problems caused by proximity to the amp. Some do it better than others and its a matter of how much you want to compromise fidelity. The only way to completely eliminate these problems is to separate the amp from the processing.